Franchise history

After the departure of the International Hockey League (IHL)'s Atlanta Knights (1992 to 1996) to become the Quebec Rafales, the city of Atlanta was awarded an NHL franchise on June 25, 1997, as part of a four-team tiered expansion. This also included teams in Nashville, Columbus and St. Paul, in which each new franchise would begin play as its respective new arena was completed. The birth of the new franchise marked NHL hockey's return to Georgia, as the Atlanta Flames, established in 1972, departed for Canada in 1980 to become the Calgary Flames. The Flames had been the League's first foray into the southern U.S., and their failure discouraged further efforts to bring NHL hockey to the region for another decade.[2]

2000-03: The early years

The newly formed Thrashers selected Patrik Stefan with the first overall selection and Luke Sellars with their 30th overall pick (second pick of the second round) in the 1999 NHL Entry Draft. However, the entire 1999 NHL Entry Draft was a major disappointment for the Thrashers, as all 11 of their draft picks were out of the NHL by the team's last season of existence; Stefan played the most games for the Thrashers from that draft, 414.[4] Their first two picks (Stefan and Sellars) were called two of the biggest disappointments in draft history; NHL.com listed Stefan as the worst first overall pick of all-time and Sellars (who played only one NHL game) as the worst 30th overall pick in NHL history.[5] This turn of events was a major surprise, as not only did the media hype Stefan as a franchise player, but hockey experts also considered then-Thrashers General Manager Don Waddell to be a man with excellent scouting ability.

The Thrashers played their first game on October 2, 1999, losing 4-1 to the New Jersey Devils. CaptainKelly Buchberger scored the franchise's first goal in the loss and the team went on to finish their first season in last place in the Southeast Division, with a record of 14 wins, 61 losses and seven ties for a total of 39 points.

The early years of the Atlanta Thrashers saw a sharp increase of hockey fans in Atlanta. Ticket sales for Thrashers games averaged at 10,000 per night, with many of them being season tickets. The overall experience of a Thrasher's game was unique compared to other Atlanta teams. A section of the arena was dedicated to season ticket holders that called themselves the "Nasty Nest". The "Nasty Nest" would chant and shout at the opposing team to disrupt them while they played. The Thrashers also had two Thrasher bird heads that would face opposite to the scoreboard. The Thrasher heads would open their beaks to reveal a flamethrower, which would ignite when the team scored a goal. It was at this time that the franchise adopted a motto "Believe in Blueland" which was often used in advertising.

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Eleven games into the season, the Thrashers were alone in first place atop both the Southeast Division and the NHL. Although they continued to play well, they could not keep up with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the eventual Stanley Cup champions, or other teams in the League. Boxing Day 2003 marked both a bright and dark day for the Thrashers. On that day, Heatley skated for the first time since his car accident with Snyder, but it also marked the last win for the Thrashers before an extended losing streak. From December 28 to February 11, the team went a dismal 2-16-3. However, fans were entertained regardless of the team's struggles. Kovalchuk became only the second Thrashers' player to score in the NHL All-Star Game (after Heatley).

While the Thrashers' playoff hopes were done for the year, they finished second in the Southeast Division to Tampa Bay and tenth in the Eastern Conference, only a handful of wins away from the Stanley Cup playoffs. Kovalchuk tied for the League lead in goals (41) with the Calgary Flames' Jarome Iginla and the Columbus Blue Jackets' Rick Nash. GoaltenderKari Lehtonen began his NHL career with four wins in four starts, including one shutout.

2005-06: Post-lockout

Before the start of the 2005-06 season, the Thrashers signed several NHL veterans in the hopes of making the playoffs, including forwards Bobby Holik and Scott Mellanby, defenseman Jaroslav Modry and goaltender Mike Dunham. At the same time, however, they lost one of their brightest stars, as Heatley requested a trade in an attempt to leave behind memories of his tragic 2003 car accident. He was eventually swapped to the Ottawa Senators in exchange for Marian Hossa (a four-time 30-goal scorer at the time of the trade) and Greg de Vries.

The 2005-06 season saw the Thrashers win a club-record 41 games, even with numerous goaltending injuries. Only a few minutes into the first game of the season, Kari Lehtonen pulled his groin, an injury that would keep him out for a good portion of the season. Veteran backup Mike Dunham, an experienced number-one netminder, stepped in, but also promptly injured himself only a few games later; this left only prospects Michael Garnett and Adam Berkhoel to tend goal. Journeyman goaltender Steve Shields was signed, but he too was injured within ten games. On April 6, Lehtonen was run into by Tampa Bay's Chris Dingman, injuring him yet again. The remainder of the season was left to Dunham. Garnett was injured in a game against the Washington Capitals. Dunham, who had started the game but was relieved by the young rookie after poor play, was forced back into action in the third period.

2006-07: First and only taste of success

The Thrashers' 2006-07 season began with the highest expectations in franchise history, even after the team's second-leading scorer, Marc Savard, departed as a free agent for the Boston Bruins. Veteran center Steve Rucchin, Niko Kapanen and Jon Sim were acquired in an effort to make up for the Savard loss. With NHL superstars Marian Hossa and Ilya Kovalchuk, as well as a healthy goaltender in Kari Lehtonen, the Thrashers clinched their first (and only) playoff berth, winning the Southeast Division title with 43 wins and claiming the third seed in the Conference and home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs. However, they were eliminated from the playoffs on April 18, being swept by the New York Rangers in four-straight games in the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals.

This season was the highest attended the Thrashers ever had, with every home playoff game sold out as well as the season opening and closing games. The team was gaining notoriety within the league for their playoff debut, and team popularity within Atlanta reached an all-time high. Even Hip-Hop artist Lil Jon expressed his support for the Atlanta Thrashers by wearing a Thrashers jersey while posing with the Stanley Cup. After this season, the Thrasher's ticket sales would start dwindling due to the housing market crash of 2008, and a stale economy in Atlanta. Although the ticket sales dropped, the fans remained loyal throughout the decline of the team.

2007-10: Struggles

Just months after reaching the playoffs for the first time, the Thrashers began the 2007-08 season 0-6. Consequently, they fired Head Coach Bob Hartley on October 17, 2007, with General Manager Don Waddell taking over behind the bench on an interim basis. The Thrashers ended the season with only 76 points, finishing 14th in the Eastern Conference.

On January 27, 2008, the Thrashers hosted the NHL All-Star Game at Philips Arena, matching the Eastern Conference All-Stars against the Western Conference All-Stars. The game had originally been scheduled for the 2004-05 season, but the NHL lockout of that year, followed by the 2006 Winter Olympics the following season and the Dallas Stars' hosting of the 2007 NHL All-Star Game, made 2008 the earliest available date. The Eastern Conference won the game 8-7, with former Thrasher Marc Savard scoring the game winner late in the third period. Although he was a member of the Bruins, the Atlanta crowd cheered Savard the entire night.

On June 20, 2008, John Anderson was named as the fourth head coach in Thrashers history. In his first season, the Thrashers matched their previous season with 76 points, while finishing 13th in the Eastern Conference. Simultaneously, Atlanta Spirit, LLC, the team's ownership group, was coming apart at the seams. A dispute between Steve Belkin and his seven fellow owners dated back to 2005; Belkin claimed the other owners breached their contract, giving him the right to buy them out at cost, while his partners said they should be able to buy out Belkin's 30% stake. On November 3, court proceedings began in Maryland to decide the group's fate.

In the final year of his contract, Ilya Kovalchuk and the Thrashers could not come to an agreement on an extension. General Manager Don Waddell reportedly offered 12-year, $101 million and seven-year, $70 million contracts, both of which Kovalchuk turned down. Rather than potentially losing him to free agency in the off-season, the team traded Kovalchuk on February 4, 2010, to the New Jersey Devils. Atlanta received defenseman Johnny Oduya, rookie forward Niclas Bergfors, junior prospect Patrice Cormier and a first-round pick in the 2010 NHL Entry Draft in exchange for Kovalchuk and defenseman Anssi Salmela; the teams also traded second-round selections in 2010. The Thrashers finished tenth in the Conference, with 83 points, which would be the most points they had earned in a regular season from the time they won the division title in 2006-07 to the team's eventual relocation in the summer of 2011.

2010-11: The final season in Atlanta

On April 14, 2010, three days after the finish of the 2009-10 season and after two unsuccessful attempts at making the playoffs, the contracts of Head Coach John Anderson and his coaching staff were not renewed. General Manager Don Waddell was promoted to president of hockey operations, while former Assistant General Manager Rick Dudley took Waddell's place as general manager. This was the only general manager change in Thrashers history.

The next day, the team named Craig Ramsay as the team's new head coach. Ramsay, who had been an assistant coach for the Boston Bruins for the previous three seasons, was a former NHL player who had been a teammate of Rick Dudley's on the Buffalo Sabres. In the following weeks, the Thrashers hired an associate coach, John Torchetti, and an assistant coach, Mike Stothers. The team also hired Clint Malarchuk as a goaltending consultant.

The Thrashers' last win came against the New York Rangers, 3-0 at Madison Square Garden on April 7, 2011. On April 10, 2011, the Thrashers played their last game in Atlanta against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Tim Stapleton scored the last goal in Thrashers history in a 5-2 loss to Pittsburgh. The final NHL goal scored in Philips Arena was tallied by the Penguins' Mike Comrie, an empty net goal and his first of the season.

Sale and relocation

Due to financial losses and ownership struggles, the team was frequently a target of relocation rumors. In later years, reports saw the team courted by suitors intending to relocate to Kansas City; Quebec City; Hamilton, Ontario, or Winnipeg.[8][9][9] On January 22, 2011, the team's ownership group claimed it had lost US$130 million in the last six years, partially as a result of an ongoing lawsuit with former partner Steve Belkin.[10] In February 2011, majority owner Michael Gearon stated that the team would be seeking new investors.[11] Various local groups announced their intent to purchase the franchise and keep it in Atlanta,[12][13] but ultimately the team was sold to the Canadian group True North Sports & Entertainment.

On May 31, 2011, True North Sports & Entertainment and the NHL held a press conference in Winnipeg to announce the completion of a deal to purchase the Thrashers. True North intended to relocate the team to the MTS Centre in Winnipeg and on June 21, 2011, both the sale and relocation of the team were formally approved by the NHL's Board of Governors. The Atlanta Spirit Group, however, retained the rights and logos for the Thrashers.[19] The Thrashers' website was shut down soon after.

The management of the Thrashers is commonly held as the catalyst of the relatively new franchise's relocation. A combination of little success and more attention for the Atlanta Hawks (also owned by The Atlanta Spirit Group) put the Thrashers second. This often left all team decisions to the General Manager. This resulted in the General Manager (Don Waddell) to make hasty decisions on rosters and coaching staff. After putting little effort into the team, combined with the economy crash of the late 2000s, The Atlanta Spirit Group decided to sell the team rather than overhaul it.

Team information

Jerseys

The Thrashers' colors were ice blue, navy blue, red and gold. In 2003, the NHL decided to switch home and road jerseys colors. In 2007, Reebok released new team jerseys as part of the rollout of the Reebok Edge Uniform System. Only the piping changed for the Thrashers' jerseys. Atlanta unveiled its new third jersey, red and midnight blue with white and gold trim, on October 10, 2008.[20]

Retired numbers

1 The Thrashers never officially retired any numbers. No. 37 was unofficially taken out of circulation after the death of Thrasher Dan Snyder in September 2003. No. 99 was retired league-wide by the NHL in 2000 to honor Wayne Gretzky.

Awards and trophies

The Georgia's Own Credit Union 3 Stars of the Year Award was awarded annually to the Thrashers player amassing the most number of points throughout the season by being named as one of the three stars of each game. The award was created in the Thrashers' inaugural season of 1999.

From the memories of everyday experience, Living Atlanta vividly recreates life in the city during the three decades from World War I through World War IIâa period in which a small, regional capital became a center of industry, education, finance, commerce, and travel. This profusely illustrated volume draws on nearly two hundred interviews with Atlanta residents who recall, in their own words, "the way it was"âfrom segregated streetcars to college fraternity parties, from moonshine peddling to visiting performances by the Metropolitan Opera, from the growth of neighborhoods to religious revivals.

The book is based on a celebrated public radio series that was broadcast in 1979-80 and hailed by Studs Terkel as "an important, exciting projectâa truly human portrait of a city of people." Living Atlanta presents a diverse array of voicesâdomestics and businessmen, teachers and factory workers, doctors and ballplayers. There are memories of the city when it wasn't quite a city: "Back in those young days it was country in Atlanta," musician Rosa Lee Carson reflects. "It sure was. Why, you could even raise a cow out there in your yard." There are eyewitness accounts of such major events as the Great Fire of 1917: "The wind blowing that way, it was awful," recalls fire fighter Hugh McDonald. "There'd be a big board on fire, and the wind would carry that board, and it'd hit another house and start right up on that one. And it just kept spreading." There are glimpses of the workday: "It's a real job firing an engine, a darn hard job," says railroad man J. R. Spratlin. "I was using a scoop and there wasn't no eight hour haul then, there was twelve hours, sometimes sixteen." And there are scenes of the city at play: "Baseball was the popular sport," remembers Arthur Leroy Idlett, who grew up in the Pittsburgh neighborhood. "Everybody had teams. And peopleâyou could put some kids out there playing baseball, and before you knew a thing, you got a crowd out there, watching kids play."

Organizing the book around such topics as transportation, health and religion, education, leisure, and politics, the authors provide a narrative commentary that places the diverse remembrances in social and historical context. Resurfacing throughout the book as a central theme are the memories of Jim Crow and the peculiarities of black-white relations. Accounts of Klan rallies, job and housing discrimination, and poll taxes are here, along with stories about the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, early black forays into local politics, and the role of the city's black colleges.

Martin Luther King, Sr., historian Clarence Bacote, former police chief Herbert Jenkins, educator Benjamin Mays, and sociologist Arthur Raper are among those whose recollections are gathered here, but the majority of the voices are those of ordinary Atlantans, men and women who in these pages relive day-to-day experiences of a half-century ago.

The events surrounding the 1913 murder of the young Atlanta factory worker Mary Phagan and the subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, the transplanted northern Jew who was her employer and accused killer, were so wide ranging and tumultuous that they prompted both the founding of Bânai Bârithâs Anti-Defamation League and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The Leo Frank Case was the first comprehensive account of not only Phaganâs murder and Frankâs trial and lynching but also the sensational newspaper coverage, popular hysteria, and legal demagoguery that surrounded these events.

Forty years after the book first appeared, and more than ninety years after the deaths of Phagan and Frank, it remains a gripping account of injustice. In his preface to the revised edition, Leonard Dinnerstein discusses the ongoing cultural impact of the Frank affair.

Born the son of a sharecropper in 1894 near Ninety Six, South Carolina, Benjamin E. Mays went on to serve as president of Morehouse College for twenty-seven years and as the first president of the Atlanta School Board. His earliest memory, of a lynching party storming through his county, taunting but not killing his father, became for Mays an enduring image of black-white relations in the South. Born to Rebel is the moving chronicle of his life, a story that interlaces achievement with the rebuke he continually confronted.

First published in 1976, The Year the Lights Came On was Terry Kay's debut novel. Revolving around the electrification of rural northeast Georgia shortly after the end of World War II, the novel has become a classic coming-of-age story. Kay, now an acclaimed writer with an international following, has reread the novel with the eyes of a seasoned storyteller. Cutting here and adding there, Kay has enriched an already highly comical and poignant work. The Year the Lights Came On is ready to find its place in the hearts of a new generation.

John James ("Cousin John") Thrasher moved to the area of north Georgia now known as Atlanta in 1839 when it was heavily forested and uninhabited. He had a $25,000 contract from the Western and Atlantic Railroad to build a railroad embankment. Today he is recognized by historians as among the three earliest pioneers of Atlanta and the founder and first mayor of Norcross, Georgia. As Atlantaâs first merchant, the site of his store on Marietta Street is commemorated today by a state historic marker reading, âThrashervilleâWhere Atlanta Began.â He became a leader in Atlantaâs civic affairs, Fulton County representative to the General Assembly from 1859 to 1863, and a benefactor of churches and charities. When he died in 1899, his Atlanta Constitution obituary read: "Cousin John was a great speculatorâ¦. At times he made a fortune, then again he would lose his fortune. In all it is saidâ¦he made three or four large fortunes and lost them.... now his death carries away next to the last of the three famous pioneers who were here before any of the people making this their home had ever heard of the place." This book captures the voice of Thrasher so well, you feel as though you are sitting right next to him. You will find yourself laughing as often as you stand in awe of Thrasher against the backdrop of the rise of a great city out of the wilderness.

Published in 1895 as a souvenir of the Womanâs Building at the Cotton States and International Exposition held in Atlanta, this charming cookbook offers readers an opportunity to try recipes that were favorites of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers. In gathering the recipes, Mrs. Wilson sought to preserve âvaluable old Southern receipts from antebellum days that have been almost lost in the ignorance of the up-to-date cook.â Here is a delightful array of soups, breads, desserts, and main dishes: Roast Pigeon, Terrapin Stew, Temperance Mince Meat, Gumbo for 3 Oâclock Dinner, many versions of Sally Lund, and of course Jeff Davis Pudding. In each case Wilson has identified the woman who gave her the recipe. In her introduction, historian Darlene R. Roth looks at the book as social history and tells us something about turn-of-the-twentieth-century cookery and the women who were involved in the great Atlanta exposition.

On October 16, 1869, Atlanta businessman John J. Thrasher purchased land lot No. 254, approximately 250 acres in southwestern Gwinnett County. He envisioned a resort town at the first stop north of Atlanta on the Atlanta & Richmond Air-Line, which was then under construction from Atlanta to Charlotte. When the railroad arrived in 1870, Thrasher subdivided his acreage and sold lots to investors and residents from Atlanta and surrounding farming communities, such as Pinckneyville and Flint Hill. Thus, he established the town of Norcross, naming it for his good friend and fellow Atlanta pioneer, Jonathan Norcross. Images of America: Norcross tells the stories of the townâs founders, residents, and visitors, combining everyday lives with historical events that stretch over 140 years. The rich history includes pioneers, Civil War veterans, former slaves, railroaders, baseball players, preachers, teachers, politicians, bootleggers, entrepreneurs, US presidents, and the 1996 Olympic torch.

Written immediately following Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre, this novel introduces one of Erskine Caldwell's most memorable characters: the philandering, murderous itinerant preacher, Semon Dye. Part allegory, part tall tale, and with a good measure of old frontier humor, Journeyman,/i> tells of a stranger, as devilish as he is divine, who mysteriously arrives in Rocky Comfort, Georgia, and, inside of a week, nearly tears the small community apart.Helping Rocky Comfort's citizens to rationalize their vices and weaknesses, Semon Dye then uses their flaws to his own advantage. Offering no forgiveness for their actions and no justification for his own, he confronts the people of Rocky Comfort with their own sins as he gambles, drinks, carouses, and fights along with them.Culminating in a tumultuous, ecstatic revival, Journeyman is filled with insights into human nature and the physical and emotional components of religious fervor. This volume reprints the complete text of Journeyman as it was first published, before the more widely circulated edition, expurgated in the aftermath of the legal battles waged against God's Little Acre, was released.